he did, watched to see what dry and rustling footing he avoided, every sense alert to play accurately this unique game of “follow my leader.”  He alone kept watch of the cover, the game, and the plan of attack.  We were like the tail of a snake, merely following where the head directed.  This was not because the Captain was so much more expert than ourselves, but so as to concentrate the chances of remaining undiscovered.  If each of us had worked out his own stalk we should have multiplied the chances of alarming the game; we should have created the necessity for signals; and we should have had the greatest difficulty in synchronizing our arrival at the shooting point.  We moved a step at a time, feeling circumspectly before resting our weight.  At the last moment the Captain motioned with his hand.  Wriggling forward, we came into line.  Then, very cautiously, we crawled up the bank of the reservoir and peered over!  That was the supreme moment!  The wildfowl might arise in countless numbers; in which case we shot as carefully and as quickly as possible, reloading and squatting motionless in the almost certain hope of a long-range shot or so at a straggler as the main body swung back over us.  Or, again, our eager eyes were quite likely to rest upon nothing but a family party of mud-hens gossiping sociably.

Just beyond the reservoir on the other side was an overflowed small flat.  It was simply hummocky solid ground with a little green grass and some water.  Behind the hummocks, even after a cannonade at the reservoir, we were almost certain to jump two or three single spoonbills or teal.  Why they stayed there, I could not tell you; but stay they did.  We walked them up one at a time, as we would quail.  The range was long.  Sometimes we got them; and sometimes we did not.

From the reservoir we drove out into the illimitable tules.  The horses went forward steadily, breasting the rustling growth.  Behind them the Invigorator rocked and swayed like a small boat in a tide rip.  We stayed in as best we could, our guns bristling up in all directions.  The Captain drove from a knowledge of his own.  After some time, across the yellow, waving expanse of the rushes, we made out a small dead willow stub slanted rakishly.  At sight of this we came to a halt.  Just beyond that stub lay a denser thicket of tules, and in the middle of them was known to be a patch of open water about twenty feet across.  There was not much to it; but invariably a small bunch of fat old greenheads were loafing in the sun.

It now became, not a question of game, for it was always there, but a question of getting near enough to shoot.  To be sure, the tiny pond was so well covered that a stranger to the country would actually be unaware of its existence until he broke through the last barrier of tules; but, by the same token, that cover was the noisiest cover invented for the protection of ducks.  Often and often, when still sixty or seventy yards distant, we heard the derisive